


Constellations

by stelladora



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast
Genre: Backstory, Friendship, naddpod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 14:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15820986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelladora/pseuds/stelladora
Summary: Hardwon finally tells the gang about his ex. Set sometime after The Galaderon Saga.Not canon-compliant.





	Constellations

Hardwon, Moonshine, and Beverly lay on the soft grass in a clearing in the forest near the Crick. Dusk had just fallen, and the three were tranquil but exhausted from a long day, and glad to be able to rest, looking up at the stars as they emerged through the indigo sky.

“Gosh, I hope my mom and the Kindleafs—Kindleaves?—got to the countryside okay. I wonder what Erlan’s doing right now,” Beverly said, almost more to himself than the other two. The other two, of course, heard him anyway.

“So, Bev, is Erlan, like, your _boyfriend_ now?” Moonshine asked with a sly grin.

“Yeah, dude, I saw the two of you smooch before they left—right in front of your _mom_ , too,” Hardwon chimed in.

“We—we haven’t really put a label on things,” Beverly said, flustered. “It just sort of happened!”

“Well, we all know how that goes,” Moonshine said. “Things ‘just sorta happen,’ you end up going for a roll in the crick mud, and then the next night he’s off with some other floozy right in your patch of crick mud!”

Beverly felt his heart clench within his chest. “Do you…you don’t think that’ll happen to me and Erlan, do you? I mean, not the part about the crick mud, but the part about him…finding someone else?” he asked, his voice seeming to get smaller. He sat up, facing his friends.

Moonshine propped herself up on her elbows. “Oh…no, no that wasn’t what I was saying at all!” she said quickly, seeing how upset Bev was. “I was just…y’know, talking about my own personal experience. You know me, couldn’t keep a steady beau even if I wanted to! I bet you and Erlan are gonna be just fine.”

“Honestly, Bev? You’re actually worried about that?” Hardwon asked, incredulous. “Have you seen the way he looks at you? Erlan adores you. It’s kind of disgusting almost,” he admitted with a smile. “And besides, think about it—you’re almost a full Paladin now, you’ve been on all these adventures, done all this cool shit—”

“Not to mention you got some super-cool new friends,” Moonshine chipped in.

“Exactly!” Hardwon continued. “You’re—no offense to Erlan, but you’re way out of his league. He’s probably worried _you’re_ going to find someone else.”

“What! Me?” asked Beverly, flabbergasted. “I’d never do that! I love him!”

Moonshine let out a long, excited squeal. “Oooh! _Love_! That’s big, Bev!” Beverly blushed. “You gonna tell him?”

“I…I don’t know. Maybe, when we see each other again, but who knows when that’ll be…” Beverly said, flustered but inwardly elated. He _did_ love Erlan. It felt good to admit it.

“What about you, Hardwon?” asked Moonshine.

“Am I going to tell Erlan that I love him? Nah, probably not.”

“No, you dunce! I was _going_ to ask, have you ever been in love?” Moonshine clarified.

“Oh. Yeah. Once.” Hardwon spoke tersely.

“Come on, tell us about that ex,” Beverly said, trying to steer the conversation away from his own budding romance.

Hardwon was grateful for the evening darkness, and though he could feel Beverly’s and Moonshine’s eyes on him, he stared resolutely at the sky above the clearing where they lay. “Well…her name was Gemma. _Is_ Gemma, I guess, she’s not dead, not that I know of—”

“Wait, you named your axe after your ex?” Moonshine interrupted, laughter in her voice.

“Yeah, I did, okay? I’m not very creative with names,” Hardwon said defensively. He sighed, then continued, “She was…pretty well-known in Iron Deep. She had a real nose for ore, she could always tell when a vein would run dry, so she never wasted as much time digging through empty rock as some of the other dwarves.”

“Was she pretty?” Beverly asked dreamily, flopping back down onto the grass.

“Hell yeah,” Hardwon said with a chuckle. “She had this dark brown hair, super long, nearly down to her knees when it was unbraided, and her beard was lighter, almost red—”

“Was her beard longer than yours?” Moonshine asked mischievously.

Hardwon scowled. “Yeah, a bit, but only because she was older than me!”

“Oooh, an older woman! Hardwon, I never would have expected it of you!” Moonshine teased.

“Dwarves age differently than humans, we were basically the same age in human terms. It wasn’t like that!” he said. “ _Anyway_ , yes, she was super hot. And she loved showing off. We’d have contests all the time—who could mine fifty pounds of ore faster, who could beat the other in an arm wrestle, who could go more rounds in bed…”

“Like, who could take more naps?” Beverly asked, confused.

“Yeah, Bev, that’s definitely what he meant,” Moonshine chimed in.

“Cool!” said Beverly.

“Gemma was always a little mad when I brought up the fact that I could beat anyone in Iron Deep at a race or climbing contest. But there were things she could do that I couldn’t, I guess. Like…she had people’s respect, you know?” Hardwon went on. “She’d been born in Iron Deep, her family could trace their lineage back to its original excavators. It was sort of tacitly understood that she’d go on to take a leadership position there, sit on the Council or something. And she was good at that sort of thing. Leading people. She’s smart, and she’s impulsive but not reckless, you know?” Hardwon sighed, fighting against becoming too maudlin.

“So…what happened between you two? Sounds like you still care about her,” Beverly observed gently.

Hardwon was silent for a moment, putting one hand behind his head and sighing deeply. He focused on the stars, connecting the little fires burning in the sky, trying to corral the mysteries of the universe into comprehensible shapes. “I…I think it’s my fault,” he admitted, his voice little more than a whisper in the dark. He had never voiced this thought before, and it weighed on him. “I was jealous of her. And I lashed out.” Once he began the story, it was difficult to keep the words inside. “Everybody loved Gemma, like I said. She really had a place there in Iron Deep. And as I got older, when I left the custody of the dwarphanage, I began to feel more and more like I…didn’t. I was three feet taller than everyone there, and even though I was the best at track and field and climbing and all that…it was a point of pride, but it also made me so conscious of how different I was. And Gemma, the poster child for Iron Deep, the person basically being trained to rule the place…how could she ever really love me? Or stay with me? I couldn’t do that to her, I couldn’t hold her back like that. I think that’s why I got so touchy. We started to argue more often, stopped spending so much time together. And then I got angry, accused her of trying to push me away. I blamed her. And that wasn’t fair, I know that. And she knew it. So we argued even more. This went on for weeks, where we’d try to pretend everything was fine and then one of us would get angry over something small and pointless…then one day we just exploded at each other. We had a shouting match—dwarves are pretty hot-tempered to begin with. And she…she told me that she didn’t want to see me ever again. That she regretted wasting so much of her time on someone who was obviously so far beneath her, someone who didn’t belong in Iron Deep and who’d never fit in anywhere…” Hardwon took a deep breath, rubbing his hand over his face as it to clear away the words, the memories.

“Damn,” said Moonshine quietly. “What a bitch. And not bitch like in the Crick sense of the word, you know, where it’s a term of endearment, but like in the rest-of-the-world sense.”

“Yeah, how dare she say that to you!” Beverly said in solidarity.

“Well I said some pretty bitchy stuff back to her,” Hardwon confessed. “I told her that she was insane and that she’d be a horrible council member, that she’d lead Iron Deep to ruin and that eventually everyone would see right through her. And I said her beard was always tangled. So…we broke up. It was a bad ending, and that’s partly what made me leave Iron Deep.”

“Woo-ee,” sighed Moonshine. “So that’s how the two of you left things? You haven’t talked since?”

“Nope. I left that night, actually. But I think…I just said that stuff to hurt her, you know? Not that I’m proud of it, I just mean…I didn’t mean any of it. So I’m hoping that maybe she didn’t mean what she said either. And that maybe we could…talk. Not necessarily get back together, but just…get closure? Because as it is… You know when you get cut with something jagged? Glass or a stick or something? And the wound is all ripped and won’t heal right? That’s what this feels like,” Hardwon said, his voice tight, willing himself not to cry.

Beverly moved closer to Hardwon, fitting snugly against his body and putting a hand on his chest. “Don’t worry, Hardwon,” Beverly said quietly. “You’ll get the chance to set things right.”

“Yeah,” said Moonshine, following suit and lying next to Hardwon. “There’s no way she meant it. You’re a great guy.”

Hardwon could still feel the lump in his throat, but for different reasons now. “Thanks, you two,” he whispered. He repositioned slightly, putting an arm around each of them.

They lay like that for a while, looking at the stars, enjoying the peaceful security of having each other nearby. After a while, they fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic, please write your own!! There needs to be more naddpod fic out there, it’s super weird being the first person to post anything in a fandom.
> 
> Also there were multiple times where I typed “hard on” instead of Hardwon lmao


End file.
